I am looking to buy a drive that I will use for primarily for playing media files (mainly mp4 videos) on a near-new PS3 which plays to the TV via an AV receiver. I was thinking about getting a small Synology NAS drive but that’s probably too sophisticated and overkill for what I want to do (and hard to justify the expense) so I am looking at one of these:

I have an ex-PS3 32GB HD that I have used as a test-bed for what I am trying to do and it works fine but it’s too small. That drive works with the USB 2 on my laptop with just a normal USB cable but when I plug it into the PS3, it needs a USB Y-cable to get enough power to run.

This is OK but I see that the new Seagate drive is advertised as not needing a power supply i.e. it will run with just a USB cable. However I am not sure whether that comment will also be true for when it runs on the PS3. Maybe there it will also need the Y-cable.

I will probably have about 100 – 200 GB of stuff and a 500 or 750 GB drive will give me plenty of room for growth.

I need to bear in mind that the drive will need to be formatted as FAT32 to work with the PS3. I read somewhere that FAT32 has a maximum file size of 4 GB but I’m not sure whether that is a general FAT32 limitation or a specific PS3 FAT32 limitation. Regardless, the limitation is not really an issue here.

I would welcome any advice or comments on all this before I commit to buying a drive. Thanks.

I use a seagate 500GB drive 2.5 and also a Seagate go flex drive 750GB 2.5 both usb powered and only use one and not dual usb cable and they work fine on my PS3 12GB unit. Plays the files fine. The drives have to be formatted Fat 32. I used guiformat to convert to fat 32 and I have used avi and mp4 movies